The 13 Most Inscrutable Google Emojis (and Our Best Guesses As to Their Meaning)

Your blogger, always the very last to update or upgrade anything, has finally migrated to the new system of “Google Hangouts” instead of Gchat. (Hooked? Dying to know more? This gets more interesting! Promise!) And while we, on principle, despise Technological Change, we were pleased almost in spite of ourselves to see a multitude of new Emoji options available. Obviously, Gchat emojis have long lagged behind iPhone emoijs and without, say, a “thumbs up,” there was no way to accurately relay the bare minimum of excitement about a given social plan. Communication was suffering.

But huzzah: the Google Hangout emojis have thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs doing things to suggest other emotions, animals, cars, various varieties of sushi, flags, bells, and sports equipment. There are also other, far more mysterious emojis. We’ve identified the 13 most utterly inscrutable. What do they mean? Our best guesses:

A. VF.com’s Alyssa Bereznak maintains this is a “hipster backpack.” It looks like a whistle covered in spit.